Have you ever stood in a long, slowly moving queue in the grocer store and, for want of something better to do, tried to imagine what the person in front is going to be eating for their evening meal? I do it now and then although, perhaps I’m lucky here, the queues tend to be short and quick-moving mostly, with exception of the day before a vacation day. Shopping is sheer hell before a vacation day because everyone knows, that one day without being able to shop, and we’re all going to starve.

A joke comes to mind, which I shall just insert here quickly before getting back to my real post: a man stands in front of the cashier who looks at his chosen products, then at him and says: ‘single?’. He nods: ‘but how can you tell? Oh, I see, buying so little and then only one of each item. Very good.’ She smiles and replies: ‘no, it’s because you’re pig ugly.’

Today I was almost forced, by a weird quirk of fate, to wonder what the man in front of me would be cooking or, indeed, what he had in mind to do with his purchases. Now, I am not going to judge anyone, we all know that people are individuals and have their own habits, their own desires, their own culinary specialities and so on. In Peru they eat hamsters, in China and Singapore dogs.

This man had only two products in his cart: ten bottles of cooking oil and twenty cans of cat food.